Development and Evaluation of Textile Actuators

Abstract: Existing actuators in robotics are noisy, rigid and not very lifelike in their movements. There is a need for actuators in especially limb prosthetics and exoskeletons that are silent, softly moving and preferably operating on low currents. One such solution is the conducting polymers. Textiles are well researched and there is a wide variety of patterning. Even more important is their reproducibility and how easily they are mass-produced. This thesis work combines conducting polymers with textiles to achieve linear textile actuators. The textiles are coated with the conducting polymer Polypyrrole which has the property of volume change, when a voltage is applied and there is a reservoir of ions accessible. The volume change, expansion and contraction, results in a linear actuation. The force and strain are measured while changing different parameters and the results are evaluated in this thesis.